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PocketBible Rejection #1

Posted on: September 1st, 2009 by Craig Rairdin 43 Comments

As I said before, I anticipated we’d have problems getting PocketBible for iPhone through the approval process at the App Store. It’s a complicated app for one thing, and Apple’s approval process has a bit of a checkered reputation for another.

Late last night we were notified that PocketBible was being rejected. The issue was a misunderstanding about how PocketBible works. We immediately submitted an explanation, added details on how they can access “help” from within the program, and resubmitted the application.

I don’t believe this puts us at the end of the approval queue, but even if it does it only took a week for them to look at the program.

So I’m expecting our next rejection within a week.

Status Update – PocketBible for iPhone

Posted on: August 31st, 2009 by Craig Rairdin 34 Comments

We’re at one week since submitting the app to the App Store and I want to answer a few questions that have come up in email and in the comments.

We will not get any feedback from Apple until/unless the app is approved. The current status is “In Review” and that’s all we’ll know until they actually either approve or decline it. If they decline it, they’ll tell us why and tell us what to do to fix it. We don’t have any reason to believe they won’t approve it, or if they find problems, that they won’t approve it eventually.
We appreciate your offers to give us donations to cover the cost of development. We’ve thought about formalizing that process but at the same time you can “donate” by simply not using our discount codes when you place an order for add-on books. We’re embarrassed to even suggest such a thing and are humbled by your generosity.
We will be having some kind of site-wide sale once the new product is approved on the App Store. We’ll send an email out to current customers and probably post something here in the blog. If you’re interested in building your library, that will be a good time to do it.
You will have access to all your current Bibles and reference books from inside PocketBible for iPhone. I’m not sure how to make this more clear. Take a look at the first video here. All I’m doing is logging into my existing account using my customer ID and password (you can also use your email address instead of customer ID if you don’t know it). Once I’m logged in, I see a list of everything I’ve previously purchased for any platform. I can download any of those titles to the iPhone.
Memorize!, DailyReader for Palm OS, and the old PrayerPartner for Palm OS are programs, not reference books, and won’t be included in the titles you can download for iPhone. We have not announced our plans for a version of Memorize! or PrayerPartner for the iPhone. The features of DailyReader are built into PocketBible and will be enhanced in future releases of PocketBible for iPhone.
MyBible users will probably have the biggest transition to make. As you might know, MyBible was written by an outside developer who was a Palm employee at the time. We marketed it on his behalf. At the same time, we developed PocketBible for Windows Mobile in-house. It was the original product that Jeff Wheeler and I wrote starting back in 1998 and which motivated us to leave Parsons Technology in late 1998/early 1999 together with Jim VanDuzer to start Laridian. PocketBible for iPhone is based on the Windows Mobile code base and overall philosophy of operation. The differences are subtle but you may notice them. For example, MyBible lets you highlight a single letter in a word. PocketBible highlights entire verses.
Remember, this is version 1.0.0. Other versions are coming. If you don’t see a favorite feature, tell us about it, then wait. We’ll be constantly working on updates for the next few months. Those of you who got involved in iPocketBible.com in the very early stages remember that we issued updates every couple of weeks for a few months as we rounded out the feature list. We’ll be doing the same thing with PocketBible for iPhone.
If you can find it in your hearts, give us a nice review. Early reviews are important. If you can do us the favor of complaining to us directly by email instead of through your reviews on the App Store, that would be great. We’re going to do everything we can to be responsive and make sure PocketBible for iPhone is everything you want it to be. If people express their complaints through App Store reviews instead of directly to us, the product could fail before we have the opportunity to finish it.
We haven’t forgotten Windows Mobile. There will be a new release of WM next year and we currently plan to revisit PocketBible for Windows Mobile sometime before then and release an update. Nothing firm yet.

That’s it for now. I just checked and there’s no change in the status of the app as of this morning. I’m sure one of you will probably spot it before I do.

PocketBible for iPhone Beta 5 / Release Candidate 1

Posted on: August 18th, 2009 by Craig Rairdin 23 Comments

Just a quick note to let you know we released Beta 5 to the testers tonight. We consider this a true release candidate. In other words, if the testers don’t find anything wrong, there’s nothing left to do before it goes to Apple. (Nothing, that is, other than changing the version number and putting the official program icon into the program, which hasn’t been finished yet.)

We expect the beta testers will find some things that need to be fixed.

Apple is reporting that most apps are approved within two weeks based on the current volume of submissions. Since this is our first submission, we expect it to come back with things we need to fix before it can be accepted.

We appreciate your patience more than you know. We also want to remind you that once this version is released we will be following it with several updates in rapid succession to round out the feature list. So stick with us through 1.0.0 and your favorite features from our other programs will show up fairly quickly.

PocketBible for iPhone Video Demos

Posted on: August 10th, 2009 by Craig Rairdin 10 Comments

I put a link to these videos in my last post but some of you may have missed it since I edited an existing blog article.

I’ve posted some videos of PocketBible for the iPhone in action on our YouTube channel. You can view those videos here.

These videos were created while running the program in the iPhone Simulator on the Mac. It makes for a nice video but the program runs faster on a Mac than it does on the actual device.

PocketBible for iPhone Beta 4 Released

Posted on: August 8th, 2009 by Craig Rairdin 19 Comments

I told you a few weeks ago I’d let you know when Beta 3 of PocketBible for iPhone went to the testers, but I forgot to do that. I’m here this evening to let you know that Beta 4 went out the door a few minutes ago.

Click here for a few videos showing PocketBible for iPhone in action.

I think the program is coming together well and we’re down to tasks like writing the documentation. One of the cool things about the iPhone app is that the documentation is “just another book” inside the program. So as we revise the User Guide, our testers just go to the “Add/Remove Books” function of the program and grab the latest version from our server. It is downloaded directly into the program.

Back in January we asked our Alpha testers, “Would you rather that we release the program as soon as possible but perhaps missing a few features, or wait until we’re completely done before releasing it?” They were very vocal in their opinion that we should get something out ASAP. So we’re going to be asking that you bear with us just a bit through the first 3-4 updates of the program once we release it to the App Store. Version 1.0.0 will be missing a few features that we fully intend to have in the program. In fact, by the time Apple approves 1.0.0 we’ll probably already have 1.0.1 ready to upload to the App Store with the additional features. I anticipate doing this very regularly for 3-4 versions until the program gets its full set of features.

This is not to say that the first release won’t be a useful program. It will support all our Bibles and reference books but will be missing a few things like note taking and tracking your devotional reading progress. Those features will come quickly after the initial version is released.

Thanks for your patience and prayers. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s looking less and less like an oncoming train.

PocketBible for iPhone Beta 2 (Finally)

Posted on: July 18th, 2009 by Craig Rairdin 26 Comments

It’s been a long six weeks since we released Beta 1 of our native version of PocketBible for iPhone. At the time I said we were expecting the beta period to be short. Needless to say I was wrong.

A Wrench in the Works

Two major things happened to really slow us down. First, we have been really struggling to get adequate performance out of our code to allow you to be able to smoothly scroll through the Bible like you would a Web page in Safari on the iPhone. Safari has the advantage of being able to render the entire page. Once that is done, scrolling around on it — even zooming in and out — is pretty easy with the features of the iPhone OS. In our case, however, we can’t render the entire Bible while you wait. We have to load it into memory in pieces. Unfortunately, computers can only do one thing at once and while it was busy loading the next chunk of text it needed to display, the scrolling would get clunky. It wouldn’t keep up with your finger motions.

We actually got to the point where it was working pretty well. We were loading text in a separate thread and drawing during otherwise idle times (say, while the graphics processor was busy animating the motion of the text). But then we installed the OS 3 SDK and things fell apart.

We couldn’t afford to take the time to figure out how and why the new version was causing us problems. Suffice to say that the particular functionality we were taking advantage of was rewritten for version 3, and in so doing the handling of touch events changed in ways that may not be significant to some applications but were significant to us.

As a simple example, when you’re tracking a touch event, the system can send you a “cancel” message. This means the phone is ringing or some other event has happened and your program needs to stop what it’s doing and let something more important take over. Well, with version 3 we’d be happily tracking a touch event and suddenly we’d get a “cancel” message. It seems the system was watching the touch events and had decided that the touches weren’t doing anything it cared about, so it told us to cancel our handling of those events. We could’ve ignored the “cancel” message (knowing it was just the OS trying to take over touch handling) but since the “cancel” message also means “really — the phone is ringing — you need to stop right now” we couldn’t afford to make that assumption.

Anyway, the end result was we threw out about six months worth of work and in about a day I coded a replacement that doesn’t depend on a lot of fancy background threads, idle-time drawing, or system touch event handling. The new user interface is simple, practical, and best of all — it’s done.

As if That Wasn’t Enough…

So as we’re recovering from that crisis, the 3GS is released. Now, when you’re developing for the iPhone there are some strict procedures you have to follow to install your program on your phone. Apple wants to make sure all program distribution happens through the App Store, so they limit how many devices you can install your app on outside the App Store. Every time we distribute a beta version (or even one of our own builds we do internally and install on our own phones) we have to identify exactly which phones it will run on. Apple lets us install on no more than 100 devices outside the App Store.

To manage this, developers maintain a list of “unique device ID’s” (UDIDs) in their account on the Apple Web site. Each phone as a UDID that uniquely identifies it. We ask all of our beta testers for their UDIDs and enter those at the Apple site. When we distribute a new build we request a certificate from Apple that contains all the UDIDs we want the program to run on.

So as I was saying, the 3GS was released. Jeff bought one for us to test with. A bunch of our beta testers bought them. So anticipating the release of Beta 2, I started collecting all these new UDIDs so I could update our account on the Apple site and create the new distribution certificate with everyone’s new UDID in it. I got about half way through entering them and the site told me I couldn’t enter any more. It said I had already used my 100 devices.

I only had 82 devices in my list. Turns out when you change someone’s UDID it counts as a new device. I had added 85 devices, deleted 3, and made 15 changes. When you delete a device you don’t get its “slot” back, so from Apple’s perspective the total was 100.

After several email, support forum, and telephone conversations with Apple and other developers, we concluded that we were out of luck. We had to wait until our annual program renewed on July 12. At that time, Apple said our device count would reset. We could delete all our devices and start over. But once we started adding devices, we were stuck with those for a year.

One thing that meant is that we couldn’t have 82 beta testers. We needed to cut the list dramatically. I wanted to get down around 40 testers. That would allow us to add some people over the next year and have room for device upgrades. We should be able to struggle through until Apple figures out that its developers aren’t trying to rip it off; we’re just trying to test our software.

So last week we sent out an email “firing” about half our testers. It wasn’t pleasant, but we had to do it. I think we have a pretty good group left. I can tell they’re good because I disagree with them most of the time. It’s good to be challenged to look at things a new way, and these folks are definitely keeping us honest.

Beta 2 Features

There are some notable features in Beta 2 that the testers will be looking at over the next week or two. These include:

Easily navigate to the next/previous page, chapter, or verse using simple taps and gestures.
Rotate between open books and Bibles with a tap or a swipe.
Hide all controls including the system status bar for full-screen reading, while having instant access to all the controls with a tap.
Search for words, phrases, and combinations of words using Boolean logic. Limit searches to any passage, book of the Bible, or range of books. Limit searches to only verses you’ve highlighted in a particular color or bookmarked in a particular category.
Add books from your Laridian account. Purchase books at our Web site and download them directly into PocketBible. Remove books as needed to free up memory (just download and install them any time you need them again).
Select from any installed font and font sizes from 8 to 72 points.
Lots of customization options, and many more features….

What’s Next?

There will be at least one more beta version before we submit PocketBible to the App Store. We’ll post an article like this one when Beta 3 is released, and another article when we send PocketBible to the App Store.

Once submitted, it will take a while for Apple to approve it. They might send it back and ask us to make changes. There’s no way of knowing how long that process will take. Sometimes it takes just a few days or a couple weeks. Other times it takes six months by the time you make all the changes they want and submit version after version for review. We don’t anticipate it will take that long but we have no way of knowing.

Any Bibles or books you buy today for any platform will be accessible from PocketBible for iPhone.

Creating Outlines in PocketBible/MyBible Notes

Posted on: December 6th, 2008 by Craig Rairdin 5 Comments

The new version of MyBible now supports HTML tags. PocketBible for Windows Mobile and Windows desktop also support HTML tags. This gives you some very nice formatting options.

HTML is a “mark-up language” that allows you to control text formatting by inserting special “tags” in the text. For example, to make a word bold you just put <b> before the word and </b> after the word. This simple example demonstrates the basics of HTML: You have an “open” tag at the beginning (<b>) and a “close” tag at the end (</b>). Both tags are surrounded by less-than and greater-than (< and >). The closing tag has a slash after the less-than (</). The “name” of the tag is “b” in this case.

Remember you can always just type plain text notes in PocketBible or MyBible. There’s no need to worry about HTML tags. But if you want to do some more sophisticated notes, you have that ability if you learn a little HTML.

Ordered Lists

Outlines start with the concept of an ordered list. An ordered list is simply a list with numbers. By creating an ordered list instead of just numbering your items manually, you can re-order the items by using cut-and-paste because there are no numbers actually in the list — the numbers are created by the program when it displays your list.

Ordered lists start with <ol> and end with </ol>. In between those tags are “list items”. List items are the items in your list. They start with <li> and end with </li>. So a simple ordered list would look like this in the note editor:

<ol>
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
</ol>

Notice that the list has an open and close tag and each list item has an open and close tag. When you view this note it will look like this:

Light
Separation of water
Dry ground; plants
Sun and moon
Fish and birds
Land animals and humans

Note that there were no numbers in the original text above, but when you view it in PocketBible/MyBible the numbers are automatically inserted.

List Attributes

Before showing you an outline, let me point out a useful feature of ordered lists. HTML tags have names (we’ve seen “b”, “ol” and “li”). They also have “attributes”. An attribute is an optional feature of the tag that controls its appearance. One attribute of the <ol> tag is “type”. We use the type attribute to tell the <ol> tag what numbering system we want to use. If we say “type=A” we’ll get upper case letters instead of numbers. “type=a” gives us lower case letters; “type=I” and “type=”i” are Roman numerals, upper and lower case, respectively. So here’s the same list as above, but with Roman numerals:

<ol type="I">
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
</ol>

When rendered in PocketBible/MyBible you’ll see:

Light
Separation of water
Dry ground; plants
Sun and moon
Fish and birds
Land animals and humans

Note one of the advantages of using ordered lists instead of just manually numbering your items: You can make a small change to the <ol> tag and it completely changes how the list is numbered.

Sublists Within a List Item

We now have all the tools we need to create outlines except for one small thing: We need to know that list items can actually contain other lists. That is, instead of a list item being some text like “Separation of water” it can actually contain an entire ordered list. We still have to be careful to include the open and close tag for each ordered list and each list item, and this can get confusing. But if you’re careful it’s not hard to get good at it. Here’s a simple example of including a list inside a list item:

<ol type="I">
<li>Seven Days of Creation
<ol type="A">
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
</ol> (This is the end of the sublist under "Seven Days of Creation")
</li> (This is the end of the list item "Seven Days of Creation")
</ol> (This is the end of the main list)

Note that we don’t close the “Seven Days of Creation” list item until the end of the list that is under it. This is important and is what makes the outline work correctly. If you type the above into PocketBible/MyBible (without the italicized comments at the end) this is what you’ll see:

Seven Days of Creation
1. Light
2. Separation of water
3. Dry ground; plants
4. Sun and moon
5. Fish and birds
6. Land animals and humans

Outlines

We now have everything to create a complex outline. Here is the code you would type into the note editor, followed by what it looks like when fully rendered:

<ol type="I">
<li>The Account of Creation (Gen 1:1-2:4)
<ol type="A">
<li>Light</li>
<li>Separation of water</li>
<li>Dry ground; plants</li>
<li>Sun and moon</li>
<li>Fish and birds</li>
<li>Land animals and humans</li>
<li>God rests</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The Man and Woman in Eden
<ol type="A">
<li>Garden of Eden
<ol type="1">
<li>The conditions before
<ol type="a">
<li>No plants</li>
<li>No rain</li>
<li>No people</li>
<li>Springs came up to water the ground</li>
</ol></li>
<li>God plants a garden
<ol type="a">
<li>Where: In the East</li>
<li>Puts the man there</li>
<li>Fruit trees</li>
<li>Tree of Life</li>
<li>Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The river
<ol type="a">
<li>Flows out of Eden</li>
<li>Four branches
<ol type="i">
<li>Pishon</li>
<li>Gihon</li>
<li>Tigris</li>
<li>Euphrates</li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>The Man and Woman
<ol type="1">
<li>Their purpose
<ol type="a">
<li>Tend it</li>
<li>Watch over it</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The warning
<ol type="a">
<li>Eat freely except...</li>
<li>Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil</li>
<li>Eat its fruit = death</li>
</ol></li>
<li>The helper
<ol type="a">
<li>Man was alone; not good</li>
<li>Animal parade</li>
<li>Man sleeps</li>
<li>God creates woman from his rib</li>
<li>Man happy</li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
</ol></li>
<li>The Man and Woman Sin</li>
<li>Etc.....</li>
</ol>

The Account of Creation (Gen 1:1-2:4)
1. Light
2. Separation of water
3. Dry ground; plants
4. Sun and moon
5. Fish and birds
6. Land animals and humans
7. God rests
The Man and Woman in Eden
1. Garden of Eden
  1. The conditions before
    1. No plants
    2. No rain
    3. No people
    4. Springs came up to water the ground
  2. God plants a garden
    1. Where: In the East
    2. Puts the man there
    3. Fruit trees
    4. Tree of Life
    5. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
  3. The river
    1. Flows out of Eden
    2. Four branches
      1. Pishon
      2. Gihon
      3. Tigris
      4. Euphrates
2. The Man and Woman
  1. Their purpose
    1. Tend it
    2. Watch over it
  2. The warning
    1. Eat freely except…
    2. Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
    3. Eat its fruit = death
  3. The helper
    1. Man was alone; not good
    2. Animal parade
    3. Man sleeps
    4. God creates woman from his rib
    5. Man happy

The Man and Woman Sin
Etc…..

MyBible Updated to 5.003

Posted on: December 5th, 2008 by Craig Rairdin 2 Comments

MyBible has been updated to version 5.003. It includes the following updates.

A customer contacted us to report a problem while using Graffiti Anywhere on a Treo. MyBible’s Graffiti Go To feature could not be used with Graffiti Anywhere. We were able to determine why Graffiti Anywhere was aborting Graffiti Go To, and make provision for it. So, MyBible 5.003 is now compatible with the program Graffiti Anywhere.
Some TX users reported that the device reset when tapping a verse hyperlink in books such as commentaries. We were able to determine that the TX model uses some of the memory dedicated to MyBible, and resolve this error.

This is a recommended update for TX users and anyone that uses or wants to use the Graffiti Anywhere product.

Registered owners of MyBible 5 can download this free update. As always, just login to your personal download account at www.laridian.com to download your purchases and any available updates.

As a reminder, remember that technical support questions should be addressed at the Laridian help desk (and not as a comment to this blog article). Also, many common questions are already answered in the knowledge base, so you may find what you’re looking for there.

MyBible Updated to 5.002

Posted on: November 19th, 2008 by Craig Rairdin 7 Comments

MyBible 5 has been updated to address two suggestions from our customers.

One consistent request related to the new MyBible 5 has been to make the autoscroll feature smoother, rather than line-by-line. MyBible 5.002 includes a new option to turn on smooth scrolling, which “slides” the text up the screen rather than jumping from line to line. Depending upon the speed of your handheld, the autoscroll rate you’ve selected, the number of notes you’ve written, and other factors, there may be slight pauses as MyBible considers how to fill in the text. However, the scrolling effect is quite visually pleasing.

(If you prefer the line-by-line scrolling, that option is still available.)

A second, though less-frequent, request was for the option to turn off images within books. Many of the newer books include some wonderful pictures and illustrations; however, these can take some time to load. When time is of the essence, all images can now be turned off so that you’ll never have to wait for a picture to load.

Registered owners of MyBible 5 can download this free update. As always, just login to your personal download account at www.laridian.com to download your purchases and any available updates.

PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile

Posted on: May 25th, 2008 by Craig Rairdin 11 Comments

It’s about time I got around to writing an article about PocketBible 4. It’s been a busy week.

On Tuesday we released an upgrade for both PocketBible for Pocket PC and PocketBible for Windows Mobile Smartphone. In order to reduce confusion about whether you have a Smartphone, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Classic, Windows Mobile Standard, or Windows Mobile Professional device, we put both programs into one installer and called it PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile. Regardless of the type of Windows Mobile device you have, this product should work for you.

PocketBible for Windows Mobile should work on all Pocket PC’s back to Pocket PC 2000, including PocketPC 2002, 2003, and 2003SE. It works on the new Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. It works on the old Windows Mobile Smartphone 2002 and 2003. It works on any device that calls itself Windows Mobile Classic, Standard, or Professional.

Our excitement over reducing the confusion was short-lived. The problem now is that since the feature set is different between the two programs (PocketBible 4 for Pocket PC has a few more features than PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile Smartphone, to use the older device names), you all are looking at the features of one and deciding that’s what you want, then you’re confused when you install to your device only to discover you have a different feature set. All I can say is read carefully.

Jeff has written a good article on how to tell the difference between the different devices. It’s really quite simple: Just ask yourself, “Does my device have a touch-screen?” and “Is my device a phone?” Based on those answers, here’s what you have:

Has a touchscreen, no phone: Windows Mobile Classic (it’s a Pocket PC)
Has a touchscreen, is a phone: Windows Mobile Professional (it’s a Pocket PC Phone Edition)
No touchscreen, but it is a phone: Windows Mobile Standard (it’s a Windows Mobile Smartphone)
No touchscreen, no phone: Ummm… it’s a BlackBerry without a service plan? An iPod? A pencil?

You can tell which version of PocketBible is going to be installed on your device based on whether or not it has a touchscreen. If it has a touchscreen, you’ll get “PocketBible for Windows Mobile Classic/Professional/Pocket PC”. This is the one with the most features. If you don’t have a touchscreen you’ll get “PocketBible for Windows Mobile Smartphone”. This is the one that could be argued is the most improved. The previous version only let you view Bibles and didn’t have the ability to do notes, highlights, or bookmarks. It was pretty basic. The new version gives you access to commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals, and all the rest of our books. Plus it has notes, highlights, bookmarks, and devotional reading progress.

The most common problems we’re seeing are mostly questions related to ordering and installing. For example: “Will PocketBible 4 work with my existing books or do I need to re-purchase or update them?” If you’re upgrading from PocketBible 3, there’s no need to update your books. If you’re upgrading from PocketBible 2 you don’t need to re-purchase your books but you do need to update them. In both cases there are articles in our Knowledgebase to help you upgrade.

We’re hoping to post some videos of PocketBible 4 both as marketing and tutorial tools. I think if you can see features like the customizable toolbar and maximized windows in action it will give you a better idea of how these can improve your Bible study experience.

Finally, a few of you have written to say you didn’t get our upgrade offer. We’ve identified a few thousand customers that did not get our initial email and we’ll be re-sending to those customers on Tuesday. In the meantime, if you want to upgrade just contact tech support to get the appropriate priority code. You can reach tech support through our Web site.